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The Student Partnership Worldwide (SPW) South Africa Trust in partnership with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) leads the Safe Guard Young People (SYP) Programme in three districts in the Eastern Cape. The goal of the SYP programme is to contribute towards the improvement of the Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) status of young people aged 10 – 24, with a special focus on HIV prevention. The Nzululwazi Senior Secondary School forms a special focus of this programme. …

Teenage childbearing and attainment at school in South Africa are investigated using nationally-representative data from the National Income Dynamics Study. The analysis focuses on the outcomes by 2010 of a panel of 673 childless young women aged 15–18 in 2008. Girls who had their first birth by 2010 had 4.4 times the odds of leaving school and 2.2 times the odds of failing to matriculate, controlling for other factors. Girls from the highest-income households were unlikely, and girls who were behind at school relatively likely, to give birth. …

South African national education policy is committed to promoting gender equality at school and to facilitating the successful completion of all young people’s schooling, including those who may become pregnant and parent while at school. However, the experience of being pregnant and parenting while being a learner is shaped by broader social and school-based responses to teenage pregnancy, parenting and female sexuality in general. …

Post-apartheid, South Africa democratised access to education as enshrined in the country’s Constitutional Bill of Rights of 1996. This also includes making education accessible to pregnant teenagers as provided for by other post-apartheid legal provisions that prohibit discrimination in education. This study explored the perceptions of education policy duty bearers on the inclusion of pregnant learners in formal schools. …

Teenage pregnancy in South African schools poses a serious management and leadership challenge. It calls for school management teams (SMTs) to acquire critical skills to manage teenage pregnancy within the requirements of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 and the South African Schools Act 84 of 1996. Little, if any, research has been conducted on learner pregnancy as a hurdle toward the achievement of millennium development goals (MDGs) and EFA goals. …

Pregnancy of learners for most South African schools has reached alarming proportions. To most governing bodies and
teachers, it has becomes difficult to deal with pregnancy of learners. What makes this a conundrum is that teachers don’t know what should be done for the well-being of the pregnant leaner, the baby and the fear that learners and teachers who may have to provide medical help should medical problems arise are not prepared. South African constitution forbids excluding pregnant learners from school and allows them (Pregnant learners) to continue with their schooling. …

Teenage pregnancy has militated against the educational success of girls in South Africa. Statistics show that four out of ten girls become pregnant overall at least once before age 20. Education is important for these girls in order to break the poverty cycle in which most of them are trapped. Though the girls are allowed to return to school after becoming mothers, they face many challenges in trying to balance motherhood and the demands of schooling. The aim of this study was to find out how teen mothers cope with schooling, hence how much support is rendered to them. …

While many girls who become mothers before completing schooling consider academic qualifications to be very important, they may not be able to succeed academically if the support they need to complete their studies is insufficient. Usually, instead of getting support, the teen mothers endure misunderstandings and pressure. The teen mothers may feel disempowered because they are ‘othered’ and consequently, they develop forms of resistance which in most cases may foster their failure as learners. …

INTRODUCTION: Adolescents having unprotected heterosexual intercourse are at risk of HIV infection and unwanted pregnancy. However, there is little evidence to indicate whether pregnancy in early adolescence increases the risk of subsequent HIV infection. In this paper, we tested the hypothesis that adolescent pregnancy (aged 15 or younger) increases the risk of incident HIV infection in young South African women. …

The purpose of the study was to document, review and critically analyse literature on teenage pregnancy with a focus on school-going adolescents. The specific objectives were as follows: To review existing literature and conduct statistical analyses to establish the prevalence and determinants of teenage pregnancy; To assess the individual, familial and educative impact of teenage pregnancy; To identify and assess the impact of interventions for teenage pregnancy; and To propose a conceptual framework for research and interventions to prevent and mitigate the impact of teen pregnancy. …

Being pregnant and a young parent in South African schools is not easy. Books and Babies examines why this is the case. Drawing on both quantitative and qualitative research conducted in secondary schools in Durban and Cape Town, the book explores how teachers and principals respond to the presence of pregnant learners and young parents in school, and surveys the attitudes of fellow learners towards them. …

Approximately 30% of teenagers in South Africa report ‘ever having been pregnant’, the majority, unplanned. While this number has decreased over the past few decades, it is still unacceptably high. The figure is for all teenagers. (13-19 years old), but motherhood for an 18 or 19 year old has very different implications than for a young teenager, one aged 15, for example. Therefore this report tries, where possible, to be mindful of differing experiences of pregnancy and motherhood across the teen years. …

Women in South Africa have had fewer children on average since the 1970s, but the rate of teenage childbearing in South Africa has remained the same. Large numbers of young mothers are a cause for social concern in South Africa and other countries because of the adverse impact of teenage childbearing on the education and health of teen mothers and their children. …